Atonement
by Kentsukan
Summary: Years after the events that occurred at Castle Brennenburg, and here Daniel was, contemplating suicide in his tub surrounded by rose petals at the request of a dead, vengeful, insane, Baron. But then again, perhaps Daniel himself was more touched in the head than he had previously believed. Has a mention of suicide in it, so this is rated T to be safe! R&R please!


AN: Hello everyone once again! Sorry for my very long hiatus; I haven't had inspiration for a while. I said I had a fanfiction in the works though, so here it is! This takes place after the Revenge ending, and Daniel is now back in England. This is just a small blurb of his new life after the events in "Amnesia: The Dark Descent". I could use some more practice with my writing, so please review and tell me what you think of this! Thank you for your time!

_"The rumors were numerous, Doctor. I can't tell you how many. Brennenburg castle was viewed like one's tombstone, overshadowing and ominous. A Baron – Alexander… That was his name – the Immortal Baron resided there. And there, people were taken. Sounds like something that would be put in a storybook to frighten children, yes?"_

It was hard to keep writing. It was even harder to act calm. Daniel gulped and started nodding his head like he was supposed to as he began to write down what was being told to him by a brown haired middle-aged man with a slight German accent. Were this any other situation, he would find how bitterly ironic it was that he was listening to a story that he already knew. Rumors he had already heard. It had been years since the events at Brennenburg Castle, enough years that he had a chance to move on. In an attempt to repent for the damages which he inflicted to other (an _attempt_ anyway, as much as he could do), he went to a safer, newer field of academia: Psychology, the study of the mind. Perhaps it could alleviate some of his own mind's suffering by understanding how it worked, and how the minds of others worked. With his idea in hand, he became a psychologist at a local hospital.

His credentials? He had _experience_, as he so carefully put it. None of what he learned was from books.

The head of the psychology department however shriveled his nose slightly at hearing that Daniel had no formal education. So to appease the aging professor, he had studied at a University and took the job. He was low on the totem pole, but it beat doing anything that he used to do.

"Yes," Daniel dryly replied, "It sounds like folly."

"_Oh, but it's not, doctor! My daughter went missing!"_

Daniel cringed at that word.

_Daughter._

He instead stiffened and raised his head. He must keep his calm. He had to, or else he'd be found out.

"There are other factors that could have been involved: you're very quick to accuse that Baron of yours of kidnapping a child. Why would a Baron kidnap a child? She could have gone for a walk and ran into thieves. Or she could have gotten lost."

"_I don't know why the Baron would kidnap a child. But, his servants – oh, yes, the servants! I almost forgot about the servants – always cloaked and sulked around. They were practically like monsters."_

Daniel's fingernails began to dig into the pad of paper he was holding. His heart was about to ram itself out of his chest. The "servants" of Alexander were described as accurate as one could put it. This patient was lucky enough to have never seen what was beyond the hood.

"_Say… you look a bit familiar."_

Daniel froze. The patient leaped out of the chaise lounge he was lying down on and threw himself at Daniel's feet, finger nails gripping tightly to the cloth of Daniel's pants near his knees.

"_Listen to me doctor – I… I know who you are. You're that man who stayed at M__ü__ller inn! You went to Brennenburg! And you lived! Tell me – what did you see? Who was there? Why did the Baron take those children?!"_

"You're insane!" Daniel cried out. "I've never been to Brennenburg Castle! I've never heard of the Immortal Baron before this session with you! You've never seen me before in your life!"

"_Yes I have! Where is she?! Where did they take my daughter?! What did Alexander do to those people?!"_

"Help! This man is mentally ill! He's assaulting me! Somebody!"

"_No!" _The man yelled, which morphed into a scream as the door was hastily thrown open. Two police officers marched in, leather boots clomping against the floor, as they picked the frenzied man up by the arms and dragged him out. _"I'm not sick! He was there! I know he was there! I saw him start up the path to Brennenburg Castle! I saw him!" _The patient kicked wildly into the air every step the guards took away from Daniel, the same words ringing and bellowing down the hallway and into prying ears and open doors.

Daniel clutched his chest tightly, now shaking in his seat. Had anything really changed?

His home was sparsely furnished, mostly because he never bothered to buy more than he really needed. But there was plenty of lighting. Candles were at every corner and every table, and oil lamps hung from the ceiling. When he would receive visitors – old friends from the museum and colleagues from the hospital - they would jokingly ask him if it was bright enough in his house. Daniel would smile and go along with the jokes, but in all truth, Daniel knew that it was never bright enough in his two-story home.

It _never _was. And no amount of light in the world could fix that.

His left hand gripped his right wrist, trying to still the tremors in his arm. He was lucky to have gotten the rest of the day off. He decided that perhaps a bath would help. The water would help him relax.

_Daniel was jumping on boxes precariously. It was a miracle that they never cracked under his weight. Beneath him, the roar of a monster rang through the stony halls and splashed precariously close to him. Daniel squinted his eyes near his feet, the edge of the walls, anything that could do. The box in front of him had a limb: a severed leg. It would have to do. Gathering himself, he leapt across the space between the two boxes and landed next to the bone, the monster splashed through the water again to the box next to him. With a small kick, the leg flew into the air until it landed with a splash in the water. This caught the monster's attention, and it quickly swam away towards the leg. Before his eyes, as Daniel watched with horror, the leg was consumed in only a mere three bites with no scraps remaining. What sort of… thing could do this? Daniel didn't know what was more terrifying: the thought of a monster that could eat a leg in three bites, or a possible death by a creature that could eat him piece by piece without ever knowing what the bringer of his death looked like._

"_That taste… that fragrance! Damascus rose!" _

His head shook violently at the memories. The last one was a tempting thought: a rose bath. Ignoring that it was a feminine smell, perhaps it could help him. It could be his therapy.

The bath was soon drawn and rose oil (he always kept a stash on hand) was added to the mix by a few drops. The flowery scent soon drifted through the air, and Daniel took a whiff at it. _"Perfect," _he sighed.

He shed his clothes, – shoes, then pants, then his shirt and undergarments – put them in a nearby pile, and carefully stepped in one foot after the other into the tub. The water rose in height at his addition and flowed around him with the faint smell of rose. Soon the water settled around him and Daniel began to soak. His head started to lighten up a bit: it seemed to be working.

"_Enjoying yourself, Daniel?"_

The deep, masculine voice that reverberated throughout the bathroom didn't make Daniel start to shake. Daniel was beyond that level of surprise; he was so shocked he froze. The water turned to ice and the scent of the rose became non-existent. It couldn't be. It _couldn't _be. He was dead. There was no return from the dead.

The ghostly form of one Alexander of Brennenburg hung over Daniel like a shadow. Unlike their last encounter when he was naked, he was instead clothed in his regal attire with the "A" on his chest. Crimson was replaced with pale blue and gold was a ghostly white. His face, to Daniel, was the only thing that changed. Those wrinkles of his were etched like scars onto what seemed an otherwise perfectly smooth face. His eyes… oh his eyes: those pale, white eyes. Those eyes seemed as white as snow, and had an utterly menacing glare to them. His mouth was turned up into a grin. Daniel knew exactly why he was grinning: Daniel was trapped.

"_I will admit, this is the last place I ever expected to reveal myself to you. But, I suppose it's only reasonable since you've revealed yourself to me."_

Daniel blushed, not of his own free will: a momentary lapse from his panic. "B-B-Ba… Bathroom."

"_Trust me. This is the last place I wanted to encounter you in." _Alexander replied with a grimace. _"I respect a man's private business, unlike you."_

"What business did you have with slaughtering all those people?!" Daniel cried out in an objection, "You say good and evil had no application with what you were doing, but that doesn't change the fact you tortured and slaughtered them!"

"_I tortured and slaughtered them?" _Alexander raised an eyebrow, unperturbed by Daniel's yelling, "_You make it sound like I was the only person who harvested vitae. What is it you used to say? 'Paint the lines, cut the flesh'? Who was it, exactly, that murdered that little girl in cold blood no less?" _

Daniel winced: the sentence hurt as much as a blow.

"_You are just as guilty as I am; only I had the noblest of intentions. You? You were after delaying the inevitable for your own selfish desires, and you did so by killing person after person after person. Tortured, them even."_

Daniel's head hung low. "Yes," he muttered, "Yes I did. I killed them. I tortured them. I painted the lines. I cut the flesh. But at the same time…" His voice now rose slightly with a growling edge, "I was manipulated entirely by you. I saw your memories." For the first time, Alexander's eyes widened in shock. "I saw them. You knew I was hopeless. You _knew _that killing those people would do shit for me. I didn't act on my own; it was by _your _will and _your _words that I did what I did. You told me they were guilty. You told me I would be saved!"

"_You still performed those acts, however. That point still remains."_ Alexander smirked. _"You have a free will, Daniel, or did you forget? You may have been under duress, but I was not holding a knife to your head when you performed your acts. True, I needed to lie to you, but it was for the greater good. I had to go home, Daniel. And now…"_ Alexander's face winked to softness and back to bitterness in the blink of an eye, _"I can never go home."_

"Tell that to all those people who died at Castle Brennenburg!"

"_Well __**I**__ happen to be one of those people who died at Castle Brennenburg, so I'm telling you!"_

Daniel winced once more, trying to muster some courage and stand his ground. With a deep breath, he sunk lower into the bath water, so his nose hovered above the surface of the water. He muttered to himself beneath its surface, air bubbles rising up and popping once they reached the top. Alexander raised an eyebrow, "Come again? I'm sorry, I don't understand bubble-speak."

Obliging him, Daniel raised his head to the surface. "I should have never lived. I should have died there."

"_Yes, you should have."_

"If I had died there, who knows what I could have adverted? What lives could still be around? That little girl… All those people… they haunt my dreams."

"_As they should; it's your fault for their deaths. I may have had a part in their demises and prevented their returns to their homes and families, but you also share the blame, Daniel."_

"So why are you here then, Alexander?" He glanced up at the Baron, who shrugged his shoulders.

"_Did you really believe that you could avoid me when I was dead?"_

"No…"

"_Then that's why I am here: because you will never escape me, and you know it. You may have evaded the Shadow, and you may have gotten away from my Castle, in spite of the challenges that were before you and the odds that leaned towards your death. But you, Daniel, have an irritable human figure in your mind," _Alexander chuckled at this,_ "Your consciousness. Since your sins were not atoned by your death at the Shadow's hands, they must be at mine. And trust me." _Alexander leaned in close to Daniel, his back bent in a bow. Daniel could have sworn he felt something radiating from the Baron: coldness, vengeance… amusement. He couldn't quite decide which. _"I am dead. My ghost is eternal. I have all the time and patience in the world. And when it comes to your atonement, Daniel… I shall be very, very patient." _Daniel recognized that voice: that voice which was as sharp as a knife, the one he used when speaking directly with the tortured prisoners. The soft volume mixed with the Baron's rich, deep tone always belied his true intentions with that voice. And it was that voice that silenced Daniel, rendering him unable to say anything back to the deceased Baron.

"_But… as I am a Gentleman, I will provide you with a simple means of surrender." The Baron's grin became even toothier, the teeth almost as white as his hair. "If you drown yourself, right here, in this bathtub to my amusement, I shall leave you alone in the afterlife." _

"What kind of twisted offer is that?!" Daniel responded in shock, his eyes wide open. Drown himself? How could that even work out?

"_The bottom line here is that you—the sinner—end your own life in atonement for your own sins. The murderer takes his life in payment for the lives he took: a life for lives. The method doesn't matter, really, but I find it to be quite convenient, and even a bit ironic. The rose petals will add a nice touch." _The ghostly laughter that emitted from the Baron echoed in the room. _"Or… I will haunt you for the rest of your life. Both are equal. The question is, would you rather suffer through life, or end it now?"_

Years after the events that occurred at Castle Brennenburg, and here Daniel was, contemplating suicide in his tub surrounded by rose petals at the request of a dead, vengeful, insane, Baron. But then again, perhaps Daniel himself was more touched in the head than he had previously believed. Perhaps none of this was real and it was all a figment of his imagination. After all, the dead do not exist anymore, and something that does not exist cannot harm you in life. But then again…

Daniel had witnessed things that should not have existed in his life. He experienced that which he thought himself incapable of. Could he really believe in that statement after all that he had been through? Was this how he was to atone for his sins?

He looked back up at Alexander, whose face seemed to have softened a bit. _"Have you decided, Daniel? I'm allowing you a sporting chance here, as a token of my former respect to you as a colleague. You should be thankful."_

"I understand that." Daniel nodded his head in slight thanks (if it could be called that) to Alexander, who tipped his head in return. "And I… thank you for it. But, to be honest… I'll pass."

"_Considering all that you've been through, I would have never taken you for a masochist, Daniel." _The Baron chuckled once again to the embarrassment of Daniel, his cheeks turning a slight pink. "I'm not doing this as a masochist!"

"_Then why? Are you so self-righteous to believe that you believe that you will find penance through helping the sick like a monk?"_

"There's nothing self-righteous about it." Daniel's mouth set to a firm line.

"_We'll see about that, Daniel." _With that last line, Alexander began to fade away. _"Go on. Lie to yourself under your supposed good intentions. You can lie to yourself, your doctoral colleagues, your patients, your future lovers and children, Daniel. But you will __**never **__be able to lie to me. I look forward to seeing you stumble for the rest of your life blindly and in agony." _And with that last word, Alexander disappeared from view entirely.

Daniel leaned his head back against the edge of his bath tub, and with a sigh, stared into the ceiling. In spite of the water's lukewarm temperature, he never felt so cold in all his life.


End file.
